Type Dip Place of origin Greece | Course Meze | |
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Main ingredients Taramas (salted and cured roe of cod or carp), bread crumbs or mashed potatoes, lemon juice or vinegar, olive oil Similar Tzatziki, Roe, Saganaki, Eggplant salads an, Skordalia | ||
Orestis kouzina greek taramasalata w chef oh orestis hillas
Taramasalata or taramosalata (Greek: ταραμοσαλάτα, from taramas, from Turkish: tarama 'fish roe' + salata, from Italian: insalata "salad") is a Greek and Turkish meze made from tarama, the salted and cured roe of the cod, carp, or grey mullet (bottarga) mixed with olive oil, lemon juice, and a starchy base of bread or potatoes, or sometimes almonds. Variants may include garlic, spring onions, or peppers, or vinegar instead of lemon juice.
Contents
Taramosalata is usually eaten as a meze, a dip for bread or raw vegetables. The color can vary from creamy beige to pink, depending on the type of roe used. Most tarama in commerce is dyed pink. However, high quality taramosalata is always beige in colour.
In Greece, taramasalata is associated with Clean Monday (Καθαρά Δευτέρα, Kathará Deutéra), the first day of Great Lent.
Name and spelling
Normally, tarama is the salted roe itself, but sometimes the prepared dish is also called tarama.
The spelling taramosalata reflects the Greek, but in English the a spelling is common.
Salată de icre
A similar dip or spread, salată de icre ('roe salad' in Romanian) is also common in Romania and Bulgaria (known as хайвер, or haiver). It is made with pike or carp roe but generally with sunflower or vegetable oil instead of olive oil, sometimes with a thickener like white bread. It is mass-produced and is widely available in grocery shops and supermarkets, as well as being made at home, in which case chopped onions are commonly added.
A version of this dip is prepared with mashed beans, sunflower oil, garlic and chopped onions, called fasole bătută or fasole făcăluită (mashed beans) or icre de fasole (beans roe).